The Lockheed F-104
Starfighter was the result of an attempt to reverse the trend towards
ever-increasing weight and complexity in fighter aircraft. When it first
appeared in the mid-1950s, it had a futuristic look about it, and its small wing
area and needle-nose earned it the nickname of "missile with a man in
it". The F-104 was the first operational interceptor capable of sustained
speeds above Mach 2 and was the first aircraft ever to hold the World Speed and
Altitude records simultaneously. First flown on March 4, 1954, the F-104 series
went on to serve with no less than a dozen countries during its 40 year career.
The NASA Flight Research Center at Edwards AFB took delivery of the first of
three F-104N’s on August 19, 1963 and were continually used for research and
support until the final flight of the F-104N on October 23,1987.
I had seen the 21st
Century Toy’s aircraft around for a while and was always impressed with the
sheer size and detail of these ‘toys’ but I’m not much of a WWII guy so I
never checked one out in great detail. For Christmas I received one of the
newest aircraft in their line, the F-104G. Since it comes prepainted in German
Air Force markings, my first thought was “wouldn’t this look cool in the
early NASA markings”. First came the research and creating all of the markings
using Adobe Illustrator. My good friend David Newman over at Muroc Models was
kind enough to print the decals on his Alps. Then came the fun part, masking and
painting. Two weeks, a roll of masking tape and several bottles of paint later,
it was all done. The toughest part about this whole project was reminding myself
that it was ‘toy’ and not a scale model as I kept wanting to fix the little
things that any good scale modeler would want fixed.
Now
you might ask, “Where does a person keep a 39 inch F-104 model?” Thankfully
I have a nice large shelf in my office at work and it certainly does draw a fair
amount of attention from everyone that spots it sitting there.
Tony
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